March 10

This week we taught lots of different people.  We baptized a boy named Gabriel and he is doing great!  His dad attended church yesterday so that was awesome, and we had 8 investigators attend church which is crazy!  And there was a boy there that we didn't even teach who came to church and stayed all three hours and listened the whole time and he said it was great.  We are going to teach him this week.

For meals we eat mostly rice, beans, and meat.  The rice and beans are separate side dishes, and then there is a separate meat like chicken or steak.  Very rarely I'll have pasta with the rice and beans.  My new favorite food is a Brazilian hot dog just because it is something new.  What you do is get a roll and hollow it out with a knife or spoon.  Then you fill it up with sliced up pieces of hot dog.  But first you cook the slices in a pan and then add a special tomato sauce that is only in Brazil.  And then after it is cooked you put it into the bread and add mayonnaise and it is awesome.

I found out there is an animal called a baisho shaka and it's like an angry yellow porcupine that likes to attack hands and knees and it comes out at night time.  And I think one lives in the roof because my companion says they like to live in areas with lots of cockroaches.  Lucky me!  We've heard scuffling in the roof.  Later today I am taking the light out of the ceiling and cleaning the interior of the ceiling.  So cockroaches are going to probably fall out of the ceiling along with angry yellow porcupine creatures!  Se eu morto, the amo - haha!

I'm staying here for my transfer and my companion is leaving.  I don' know more than that.  Only the zone leaders and the mission president know.  I got to see my mission president at a zone conference with four other zones. I ran into my first companion from the MTC so that was fun!

I got all the Dear Elder letters and I'll probably get more things in two weeks. I wasn't able to send anything last week because there is a horrible Satanic holiday here where people celebrate bad things.  It's called the celebration of the flesh and parents here send their kids away to camps to get away from seeing any of it.  It's all through Brazil and it's pretty crazy.  SO I can finally send a letter today.  That's good you got my first letter.  Yay!

I'll probably get the Easter boxes in a month and a half or so so not too bad!  I love Brazil so much it is awesome here.  I wish I could take more pictures but there is a high risk of theft!  And I can't look like a tourist and I stand out as it is a mile away!  People here love my American accent!  So that's fun.  There are a lot of poor people here.  I've learned that people here think the war with Iraq was fought in the United States so that was interesting.  Also people often think we are bus workers and they will stop their cars and ask us for directions!

 Baptism for a boy Gabriel.  It was such a great baptism and the spirit was so strong.

The trees here are very lush and there are lots of pretty flowers.  Brazil is beautiful.